Writing “The Man Who Fell From the Sky”

By Bill Fletcher, Jr.

The Man Who Fell From the Sky is a fictional murder mystery taking place in 1970, which focuses on issues of race, justice, revenge, and Cape Verdean Americans.  Located mainly in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the book begins with the murder of a white construction contractor, a man who was known as a stand-up figure in the community.  The murder is investigated by a Cape Verdean American journalist and his friend, an Italian American detective.  The story takes the reader back to World War II and grapples with issues that were being confronted by Cape Verdean Americans in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

            When I have done book promotional events, I discover something quite interesting.  Most people have not a clue as to who Cape Verdeans are.  The Republic of Cape Verde is an archipelago approximately 500 miles off of the coast of West Africa.  Uninhabited until the arrival of the Portuguese in the 1500s, the island became a transit point in the shipment of African slaves to the Western Hemisphere.  Over time, a population of African former slaves arose on the island, many of them with mixed Portuguese and West African blood.

            Due to frequent and often severe droughts, Cape Verdeans periodically migrate.  Beginning in the 19^th century, mainly as fishermen and whalers, Cape Verdeans began arriving on the shores of New England.  Communities developed around New Bedford, MA, and other parts of New England, eventually spreading to New York and California.  The Cape Verde became free of the Portuguese in 1975 and became an independent country (splitting off from Guinea-Bissau) in 1980.

            As the first post-1492 African population to come to the USA voluntarily, they immediately encountered the challenges of the US version of white supremacy.  Whereas the Portuguese engaged in a maniacal usage of different skin colors as a method of social control, in the USA the Cape Verdeans discovered that a ‘drop of African blood’ made one “black,” irrespective of skin tone.  They also came here as colonized people from within the Portuguese Empire, speaking Portuguese and/or Kriolu, having an identifiable homeland, and being overwhelmingly Roman Catholic.

            My novel is set at a time when there is a struggle going on within Cape Verdean America regarding both identity as well as their attitude towards the national liberation war underway in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde against the Portuguese.  This war, taking place at the same time as the growth of an increasingly militant and Black conscious African American movement, was having a great impact on how the Cape Verdeans saw themselves.

            The Man Who Fell From the Sky is oriented towards a broad adult readership.  First and foremost, it has been aimed at those who are interested in mysteries.  Yet the book is more than a mystery novel in that it touches on various historical themes.  The book seeks to introduce a US population to an ethnic group with which many are unfamiliar, but which has played a role not only in the country as a whole, but particularly in the reshaping of what it means to be a Black American.

            The origin of the book is to be found in two unconnected sources.  First, as an African American child born and raised in New York, I would visit Cape Cod, MA (during the 1960s) where I encountered Black people who were very different than those around which I had grown.  At first, I thought that the differences were to be found in the fact of their living in a non-urban setting.  As I aged, however, I discovered that there was a particular identity that most of them articulated with which I was unfamiliar:  Portuguese.

            I knew enough about geography and history, even as a youngster, to have questions as to why these Black people would identify as Portuguese and would sometimes strenuously resist being called “Negroes,” “Afro-Americans” or “Black”.  This led me to do some studying of history.

            In the mid1980s, as part of some research I was conducting for a booklet I wrote on Blacks and organized labor—The Indispensable Ally:  Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations—I interviewed Cape Verdean longshoremen in New Bedford, MA who had been active in the 1930s and 1940s.  At one point in the interview, I asked the group whether they had had any problems with white workers.  The group looked at me as if I had asked a question in Japanese. Then one mentioned a group of workers, I believe that they said that they were the “Greenwood guys,” but there was no explanation or elaboration.

            Months later I spoke with an iconic figure in the New Bedford Cape Verdean community, the late Jack Custodio, a longtime progressive activist.  I told him about my interview and he started laughing, pointing out to me that the workers that I interviewed refused to acknowledge that the Greenwood guys were the Portuguese and they, themselves, were refusing to publicly recognize that they were not white!

            A second contribution to my writing the novel was a story that I had read, and which I could not confirm, about an incident that took place during World War Two.  I was intrigued by the story and thought, over the years, as to how I might be able to link such a story to a mystery novel.  I cannot reveal that story because it is central to the plot.

            The response that I received to the book was amazingly positive.  The challenge, however, is that I had a small publisher, and this made it difficult to receive as many reviews as I had hoped.  Additionally, having a small publisher limited distribution.  Yet the response was so positive that I was encouraged to write a sequel, the editing of which is nearly complete.

            The Man Who Fell From the Sky reflects my love for Cape Cod, MA, my admiration and respect for the Cape Verdean American population, and my desire to introduce complex discussions about race/racism in the USA.

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Bill Fletcher, Jr. is the author The Man Who Fell From the Sky, as well as being the author of non-fiction works.  He is a longtime trade unionist, writer, and a past president of TransAfrica Forum.  He can be reached at [email protected] and is on Twitter @BillFletcherJr. This is his first time contributing to the readersmagnet.club.